


Almost

by misbehavingvigilante



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 19:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbehavingvigilante/pseuds/misbehavingvigilante
Summary: Ah, how hope was a poison that would not balm the cruelty of reality.*Endgame Spoilers*





	Almost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tryannosaurus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tryannosaurus/gifts).



> This fanfiction does have Avengers: Endgame spoilers, if you read this despite me having warned you like three times then I just don't know what to tell you. 
> 
> Anyways with that out of the way, Happy birthday, [Tyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tryannosaurus)~! MCD as requested, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> If I missed/misused any tags, let me know!

It works until it doesn’t work.

 

Perhaps that’s not so strange in the shadow of a universe that’s been forcibly halved, sometimes Tony wonders, would he have survived the Snap? Would he have even been here in the first place if Strange hadn’t saved him?

 

He loves Morgan, he does love her. Of that? He has no doubt, no hesitation, and no second thoughts.

 

But things with Pepper are… at odds with what they were. Bounded by a lifetime of experiences together, and then one of a grief so unimaginable, it was hard to believe all who survived the Decimation could relate.

 

It should work, but it falls apart.

 

Maybe, everything is destined to fall apart in this world. Tony isn’t sure, his own motto of rebuild, reimagine, and rework just doesn’t seem right anymore.

 

They skirt around the issue, there is already a lot of damage in this world, to add a divorce on top? It just seems cruel. But Tony remembers his parents, he remembers how strained things got between them, and how in all likelihood a divorce would have probably been better.

 

It’s hard to know for certain, but then what is certain?

 

Civil services weren’t exactly up and running after the snap, things were in chaos and absolute disarray when desperation and panic set in. Nothing that wasn’t essential was being prioritized, so while there had been a ceremony, while there had been rings, it wasn’t like it had been officially sanctioned nor recorded.

 

All the record keeping had gone in memorial to those that they lost, and those that had been lost in the times between. Snapping half of the universe, in reality claimed more lives. Though who had been travelling during the affair in airplanes, buses, and cars? Those casualties had added up and quick. So had who had on government assistance, many governments collapsed when the snap happened, and citizens had been on their own. Old, young, abled, disabled, it hadn’t mattered.

 

The mad Titan had insisted it was fair because it was chance, that such decisions had no weight on who survived and who was spared.

 

As if anyone was truly spared.

 

Morgan has never known anything else, she had never known a world that wasn’t this, and some part of Tony would always mourn given that. This world was a reminder of his failure every day, and playing house didn’t exactly make him forget that.

 

It wasn’t as if afterwards Tony had been able to do much. He had nearly died in space. And that recovery hadn’t been as swift as only as few days out and then he was back to one hundred percent again. Physical trauma of that had been a lingering ghost for months until it finally stopped haunting him.

 

Some ghosts never would. It was difficult to even think of Peter sometimes. Morgan sometimes by no fault of her own, was the worst reminder of all. He had a child, yes, but that didn’t erase the one he had lost.

 

It would never erase the one he had lost.

 

Finally, Pepper is the one that ends things with professionalism straight out of their work relationship. It feels out of place when they’re supposed to be together, and yet it’s not unwelcomed.

 

“Eventually, she’s going to notice. She’s a smart kid. Kids are perceptive, but even then she’s not going to understand why and she’ll be liable to blame herself that something is wrong.”

 

“So… that’s it?” Tony asks, as if somehow this should have been more complicated, or that it should have hurt more.

 

“That’s it.” Pepper nods. “I love you, Tony. I’m always going to love you, but it’s not fair to her, to you, or me to keep pretending this is working when it isn’t anymore.”

 

“I love you too.” Tony says, reaching for her hand, finding the band of metal still on her ring finger. The cool touch familiar yet foreign. “I’m sorry.”

 

Pepper shakes her head, but she doesn’t pull back her hand. “Don’t be. You should talk to Steve.”

 

That…. that sends Tony reeling. He pulls back like he’s been scalded and Pepper doesn’t even so much as a single flicker of surprise in any of her fine features. He makes himself small in the chair of their kitchen table, he feels as broken and as frail in that moment as he when he had nearly died in space, the second time.

 

Steve was not someone they spoke of.

 

Pepper had been there when he had ripped the arc reactor out of his chest and into Steve’s hands while he screamed at him. So had others but at that moment of time, only Steve and Pepper had mattered, mirrors of each other that Tony hadn’t quite understand why it happened in the first place. In the end, Pepper and Steve had never seen that much of each other, so the connection made even less sense. He had been delirious, Tony admits that may have played a minor role, but none so small as some people might have liked to imagine. He had been right, yes, Steve had his own points too. Tony could agree that that whole ‘civil war’ that more or less broke up the Avengers hadn’t been as simple as he was right and Steve was wrong.

 

It would have been so much easier had that been the case. But it wasn’t, this is was real life, and real life was messy.

 

But screaming at Steve had been cathartic in all the things he felt ignored and isolated he had felt over the years. He had been right about an army in outer space, he had been right that Earth had needed some kind of defense against a cosmic threat, he had been right, and Tony had wanted so desperately to be wrong.

 

He had wanted Steve to be right. He wanted such measures to be unnecessary, he hadn’t wanted to be the bad guy, he hadn’t wanted to be the person that trauma had made him into.

 

But he had, and he was.

 

“Listen.” Pepper speaks softly as if she’s speaking to a small, frightened animal instead of her recent ex-husband, the former Iron Man. “You have unresolved issues with Steve. It’s always led back to him in a way, I can’t say I understand it always, but I can see it. I’ve always known that, whatever that is, was there.”

 

“That?” Tony wonders.

 

“I have no idea what ‘that’ is, Tony.” She admits honestly though she doesn’t understand it, she doesn’t seem to scorn it, whatever it is. Tony thinks in any other way this would sound illicit, like he had been unfaithful, if only emotional, but it hadn’t been like that with Steve, it hadn’t been like that with Steve, it-

 

Pepper’s sweet, soft voice breaks him out of his spiraling thoughts as he looks at her, desperate, desperately for an ounce of stability when he feels so unanchored and weightless. “It’s something you and Steve would have to find out yourselves.” Pepper says and it’s her reasonable tone. Tony hates her reasonable tone because it is so hard to argue against, and eventually he always admits later on that she has a point.  

 

He could try, but he is tired.

 

Things… weren’t left the best with Steve and whatever the future holds? Is this where he wants to leave things with his former teammate?

 

“Breathe.” Pepper coaxes, he draws out a shuddering breath before she holds him for a while. Her arms like a vice around him, comforting in how strong, how warm the hug was. Pepper had always been stronger than many had thought her.

 

Later on, Morgan walks over, the very center of both of their world, so far unaware of how things had just shifted between her parents. She sees the hug and proclaims excitedly that it should be a group hug. Tony doesn’t hide his tears, though Pepper tells Morgan they’re happy tears when she asks.

 

Tony doesn’t comment on the watery look in Pepper’s eyes.  

 

~

 

It takes a while to work up to seeing Steve.

 

Sometimes he remembers Siberia, how he was left in a dead suit, alone, betrayed, and cold that his body is filled with phantom chills that aren’t erased no matter the layers he bundles up under or how high he turns the heat.

 

In those moments, he wonders if that’s what Steve felt like constantly coming out from the ice, and his thoughts spiral and spiral until he has to defragment his entire brain and work on something else.

 

~

 

Other times, he gets further, he get outside, he gets in the car, he drives with the destination in mind, he kept tabs on the Avengers… knowing one day with certainty, they’d come knocking and for what? What hope was there left?

 

But he stops because that’s that real fear of the unknown.

 

What would happen if they met again?

 

In his experience, their meetings were always volatile except for occasional circumstances, where somehow they harmonized instead of exploded. But now, they are a long dead formula in a world with a long dead waiting list.

 

If they interact again, what would the fallout be?

 

~

 

Other, other, times, the ones they don’t talk about, the ones they don’t acknowledge always having been on the cusp of almost, and of some things.

 

Those are the ones that haunt Tony the most.

 

There is nothing more daunting than almost. 

 

They almost stopped Thanos. They almost were a functional team, they were almost good friends, and they were almost….

 

~

 

It’s the almost that gets Tony there.

 

He doesn’t know for sure how this meeting will go and the scientist in him can’t ignore an unknown query, not for long at least.

 

He knows Steve picked up the support group that Sam had once run for veterans. He had liked Sam though they had never been on the same side. Sam had always been a Steve friend, and though, it wasn’t as close as Steve was to Bucky, that Tony knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.

 

He knew the lengths that Steve was willingly to go for Bucky, that…. That was quite clear.

 

Sometimes Tony wonders if he had projected the friendship he had with Steve. If he just hadn’t been able to deal with his childhood hero hating him or worse, not having an interest in him whatsoever. That he had just imagined the camaraderie where there was none, as if had he only paid attention closer, he would have known to begin with that things would always end up here, that they would never be each other’s first choices.

 

But then again…

 

That wasn’t what this was about. Steve had lost Bucky and Sam both in the snap, and it didn’t matter if it was real or not, that was a loss that Tony wouldn’t have wished on him regardless of their standing.

 

He hangs back, wonders if he’ll lose the nerve when Steve is addressing the departing group with quick advice and goodbyes, before it seems suddenly those once familiar blue eyes fall back on him. Steve’s mouth goes slack, and whoever he’s talking to notices and seems to say something about that.

 

Being here and being seen were two very different thing but even as Tony stands, maybe to leave, maybe to clear his head, Steve is there.

 

He had always been spry for an older guy, Tony thinks fondly.

 

Things had seem so hopeful back in the day where they had gotten off on the wrong foot, and it seemed like with their ragtag team they could have taken on any threat.

 

Ah, how hope was a poison that would not balm the cruelty of reality.

 

The weight against his wrist is a vice though, it doesn’t hurt that badly, Tony’s had worse, and all of them had worse at this point. Still it’s a clear sign that though Steve is here playing at therapist, he hasn’t lost that enhanced strength.

 

Steve looks at him like he’s seen a ghost and maybe that haunting look is attractive on him. 

 

Then again, Steve makes just about anything look attractive, it’s always been a quality that both exasperates and elates him.

 

“Did you think you were hallucinating?” Tony asks, curious. He’s always been too curious for his own good. “Is that why you felt like you had to hold my wrist that tightly? Or were you checking to see if you could still feel the bones? I did put back on the weight. I would think you could tell from my charming face.”

 

Tony gestures to it with his free hand in a dramatic motion. As if it wasn’t filling with more wrinkles, and as if his hair wasn’t fading from old age, Tony still felt like he painted a pretty enough picture that Steve could appreciate at least from an aesthetic point of view.

 

Artists were supposed to be good about finding beauty everywhere, weren’t they?

 

Steve uncurls his hand swiftly as if he just realized he was touching molten iron that would burn him through and whole, he then jolts back like he’s been shocked from a stray spark in a forge, a cut off reply as he just stares sheepishly at him instead. Tony wonders if maybe this is what Pepper saw him look like that day, Steve looks cowed as if anyone ever could tell Captain America to do anything he didn’t want to.

 

“Relax, I’m not here to rip out my heart again. I mean, I could if you wanted to, I guess?” Tony shrugs, ever the one to please a crowd.

 

“…once was enough for me.” Steve says softly. His eyes take in his features, it has been a few years since they last met, so Tony figures Steve has the right to sweep his eyes over him, committing his form to memory like an artist would a subject they were interested in. Steve’s eyes settle on his hands and Tony thinks why there of all places? “I’m happy for you and Pepper.”

 

Tony blinks, considering the implications before he remembers he still wears the ring. Morgan had understood the significant of rings, so they both had more or less kept them on just because that had seemed easier. Their lack of romantic and sexual relationship hadn’t changed things much, and consistency was good for kids, so…

 

“We’re not.”

 

Steve then looks panicked. A blanket show of emotion, he would have made a convincing show of hiding years ago unless he was absolutely pressed into revealing that he did have feelings. “Is she…. Is that why you’re-“

 

Tony thinks he might have liked Steve looking panicked, would have been nice if he shared in some of his well-placed paranoia back in the day, but now? It just feels hollow, like the aftermath of just one more pyrrhic victory. He just feels bad for inadvertently making Steve feel bad.

 

Maybe he has matured? Or maybe it’s just of everything they’ve lost, to keep fighting each other is just one more thing they have left to lose.

 

Tony sighs, “Stop looking like someone just sucker punched you. It’s fine. She’s fine.” Tony doesn’t know if Steve knows about Morgan, maybe he does, and maybe he doesn’t, but right now he’s not inclined to go all doting parent around him. “We’re just not a thing anymore. You know? It happens, it isn’t always because of doom and gloom circumstances. Sometimes you’re just adults and you’re like hey, this isn’t working anymore.”

 

“Oh… oh thank god.”

 

“Really, rogers?” Tony raises an eyebrow. “That’s a shitty thing to say.”

 

“Not like that!” Steve raises his voice, and holds his hands up in a gesture that signifies he means no harm. Tony believes it this time, surprisingly. “I feel like we always get off on the wrong foot and I hate it.”

 

“Yeah…” Tony agrees to that.

 

Everything goes to standstill as both of them shift, unsure what to do or say next.

 

Tony eventually has to get back to Morgan because he’s been relying on Pepper more lately in regards to Morgan, the months it’s taken him to get up the courage to see Steve alone in the first place. They had an agreement, which he’d be back at a certain time regardless of what happened.

 

Something to hold him accountable.

 

“Anyways-“

 

“Can I-“

 

They interrupted each other, naturally.

 

Tony laughs because he really wonders if the universe has it out for them, if it has something against them having an even vaguely amicable union whatsoever.

 

“I haven’t heard you laugh in a while.”

 

“It has been a few years. If you had that’d be creepy.”

 

“I missed the way you’d laugh when you’d work something out, it’d have this manic note to it because you usually hadn’t been up for far too long and you barely ate….” Steve sounds sentimental.

 

Tony’s not sure what to do with that.

 

“I’m glad to know you missed something I did at least.” It’s refreshing in a way to know he was missed as something he was rather something he wasn’t. “I supposed I missed the way when it looked like you finally warmed up to the future. The futurist in me squeed especially when it was because of me.”

 

“You always did have such a warm presence.”

 

“Careful, Rogers, compliment me too much and it’ll go to my ego, remember?”

 

“Steve.” Steve reminds. “If you wouldn’t mind…”

 

“I guess not, Steve.” Tony says simply in return. “But I really can’t stay as much as this has been nice.” And it has been nice surprisingly. “I gotta get home.”

 

“Before you go…” Steve trails off.

 

Tony raises an eyebrow, but it seems by the balled up fists on Steve’s side that maybe he regrets speaking at all. “I hope it’s not that you want to punch me in the face. I know I had that comment about your teeth, but I did compliment them at least.”

 

“I just wanted to hug you. But I understand if that’s not okay, and respect your boundaries.”

 

“You took the therapist gig real hard, didn’t you?” Tony teases though it lacks heat.

 

“But sure, get your hug on.” Tony motions his hands towards his chest, clearly signaling he’s okay with this, and with that permission clearly given, and with a beat of a pause. Steve does just that. Tony swears his feet come off the ground for a moment before Steve reels it back, but he finds he misses that weightless feeling though it was brief.

 

The hug is crushing nonetheless, it’s been a while since someone has hugged him so tightly. Probably Rhodey had been the last. The man knew how to give bear hugs and Tony loved him for it, but right now, here in Steve’s arms, able to little to return the affection, he thinks he come could to like Steve’s hugs too.

 

It’s a shame, that whatever is fueling this meeting will probably never happen again.

 

That it’s just one of those moments, incandescent, ephemeral moments that poets write about. Or the scientist in him argues, fulgurite. Requiring just the right conditions to appear at all, and the truly beautiful pieces being even rarer still.

 

Tony drives home, a wordless goodbye to Steve but a knowing look that seems to have said enough.

 

~

 

The next day he has bruises of where Steve held him on his wrist. It’s a compulsion but Tony pressed into them, his strength is no match for Steve’s, but he wants them to stay.

 

He doesn’t question why that is.

 

Only that he does.

 

~

 

Naturally because the universe loves fucking him over, he’s brought back into the fold.

 

He opens the door to Steve whose eyes widen at the not so little bundle in his arms, that brightens up at company unaware at all of how much history stretches between the two of them.

 

Tony bites his tongue, the audacity Steve had to showing up at his home is one thing, on another level altogether compared to Tony having visited Steve at his makeshift therapy camp.

 

“Go see mom, okay?” Tony says, voice slightly stilted as he sits Morgan down who looks at him inquisitively and then back to Steve. In that moment, Tony has a very clear image of what it must have been like for his parents to raise him.

 

A child far too bright for what little years they had so far.

 

“Okay.” She says sing-songy, but that look in her eyes promises mischief.

 

Tony feels ambivalent at that. He likes that his daughter will be a troublemaker, but right now he worries about what chaos she might unleash into a relationship, she probably can’t quite yet understand the complexity of.

 

“She’s cute.” Steve speaks, ever the tone of a diplomat. “She takes after her father.”

 

“Let’s hope in the good ways.” Tony laughs, but it’s a nervous kind of laugh because the last thing he wants to do in the world is fuck her up because he’s too much of a fuck up.

 

“She will.” Steve says firmly, like he has any reason to believe such a thing. Like he has any proof.

 

Tony ignores that. “So what world ending disaster is it, this time? Does Thanos have a brother? A cousin? Or some contrived ending that every single sequel seems to have that everyone hates?”

 

Tony waves Steve into the house, a little shell-shocked that he’s here, and how he remembers how close they had been at that meeting. How long that hug had gone on, and how different it had felt compared to the next time he had asked Rhodey for a bear hug.

 

Steve seems to be a little nervous too, and it’s probably because they’re both not at their best that they don’t see the trap that Morgan laid for them.

 

Tony doesn’t quite turn his ankle on the toy, but its trajectory had been just right to make sure his balance was compromised enough that either Steve has to stop him from falling or let him fall. For a moment, Tony thinks Steve will let him fall, he’s not carried through on his promises before but there he is with his arm wrapped around his waist, plastering him to Steve’s side as if there hadn’t been any other way to do so.

 

Tony is pretty certain there had been, but it’s hard to think about that when he glances up and catches Steve’s eyes and the moment between them feels like they’re on the edge of something as close as they are.

 

Unconsciously mirroring each other to draw even closer together.

 

The edge of…

 

The doorbell rings again and that’s enough to ruin the moment.

 

Tony has the dawning realization that Steve is not alone, and somehow he doesn’t like that. He sighs, and pushes Steve away who lets him.

 

Morgan walks by innocently, her hand in Pepper’s.

 

“Morgan, you shouldn’t leave your toys on the floor.” Pepper admonishes.

 

“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.” Morgan says, and Tony knows she’s not sorry at all, though she does look disappointed.

 

All he can think is same, before there is Natasha and Scott at his doorway. 

 

Why the two of them were hanging back, he doesn’t know. It feels like Natasha gives both him and Steve a look over in a way that promises, she was the reason they had even a moment between them in the first place.

 

He doesn’t know whether to hate or thank her for it.

 

~

 

But then, then, there’s a chance.

 

There’s a chance that things can go back to normal, or as close to normal as you can when attempting to resurrect half of a population that’s been turned into dust and dead some five years.

 

Whatever it takes.

 

~

 

Time travel is a thing and Tony feels proud for basically having figured it out in a night, but it’s a nervous proud. What if they mess things up? What if they make things worse? What if? What ifs haunt him.

 

But he owes to Peter to die trying to bring him back.

 

He owes it to Morgan to try and bring about a better world for her.

 

He doesn’t know exactly what he owes the Avengers, they were a team once, but sometimes it seems like they were a team in the loosest sense of the word, held together just by chance of coming together at that right time rather than born out of a genuine connection.

 

But it doesn’t matter what they were, it matters what they are now.

 

They promised once, they’d avenge the Earth if they couldn’t save it, so it’s time to make good on that promise.  

 

~

 

Things never stop being… weird with Steve. It always feels like they’re one breathe away from something. It’s an electric pull that brings them aside each other, again and again. Unconscious but at the same time but not entirely unknown.

 

They don’t fight it, but then, they can’t prioritize it.

 

Whatever it is, it can’t come first.

 

Whatever it is will have to wait, even there is no future promised for either one of them.

 

Whatever it is, Tony wishes they just had more time when they hadn’t been at odds, wishes there had been more times where they had simply been at ease with one another, were they had been on the same side.

 

But time is a force much older and stranger than either of them, and it doesn’t care about what they want. It doesn’t have the capacity to care about what they want.

 

In a way that is reassuring, but in another it is frustrating.

 

You cannot blame something that has no capacity to feel.

 

~

 

The final battle in a lot of ways is in a much better place than it would have been naturally. They’re not the fractured Avengers with a halved world, they’re the avengers, and several other groups put together which is nice since they have an entire army to defeat somehow.

 

It’s like the worst game of capture the flag either instead of getting skinned knees and dirt up your nose, the consequences is severe injury and death.

 

Tony knows he has a morbid sense of humor, it’s a good coping mechanism in the face of trauma that could have otherwise had him institutionalized.

 

The jokes about death and dying become a lot less funny in the thick of things, though.

 

Tony hadn’t seen Steve move, for a larger guy, he certainly can move around like a fucking ballerina sometimes. 

 

He had always wondered if Natasha had taught Steve dance lessons, but now it hurts to even think of Natasha really when she’s the only reason they have the soul stone to begin with.

 

But somehow, there he is, the only thing standing between him and Thanos and a very high probability of death. Tony hasn’t quite figured out how to cheat death for good right now, so it’s something he’d like to avoid with an army that could very well wipe out all the humanity and life they just brought back with the gauntlet on his side or not.

 

Tony knows what’s going to happen before it does, he’s smart, and he knows how to run specs fast and on the fly.

 

It doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

 

It doesn’t make it easy to watch Steve hit the ground, and know with absolute certainty, serum or not, that he wouldn’t be getting back up. It doesn’t seem right, how life as bright and as bold as Steve Rogers can just vanish in a second like that.

 

He has all these thoughts in the span of the second.

 

Maybe it’s stones now on his hand that has time slowing down enough to give a moment’s reprieve, maybe it’s just the sense of grief distorting his view of time and he’s going to die to before he can even wield the damn thing properly to begin with.

 

Either way, Tony thinks that this may be what he had wanted from Steve all along.

 

That he just wanted Steve at his side, that he had just wanted Steve to watch his back and that he had just wanted Steve to love him. Not a hero loving back a fan, not a teammate loving back a teammate, but as a lover, loving him back and now that is a reality that is only ever going to be closed to him .

 

Because he can’t risk anything else, he can’t rewriting the laws of everything for just one man, when everything else is at stake, and he knows Steve wouldn’t want that either.

 

He remembers that day on the helicarrier, all those years back when Steve had told him under the influence of the stone, but still had said he wasn’t the kind of man to make the sacrifice play. That he wasn’t the kind of person he could lay himself down on the wire and so others would live in his stead.  

 

And so, he snaps back literally and figuratively when Thanos pulls his whole ‘I’m inevitable’ shtick.

 

“I am Iron Man.”

 

In an instant, Thanos and the army is gone, and in the same instance he is fire and death. Tony thinks it’s ironic, that he is like the very weapons he would use to make so naively thinking he was making the world a better place before he had his eyes opened.

 

He thinks back to Yinsen telling him to not waste his life and he thinks, maybe, maybe I did a good job.

 

His last thought is that the world will be whole again, but not at the same time.

 

There’s no Iron Man without Captain America. 


End file.
